Writing Assignment: Compare/Contrast Paper - I don't even know how to compare these. They are worlds apart to me! Help Please!! Also included the tutorial for the elements of fiction. Not sure why that would help in a compare and contrast, but the assignment rubric mentioned it.
It has become a cliché to say that "the movie is not as good as the book." However, as we can see in our studies, the differences between a book and the movie based on it have to do rather with the two different media in which they are presented. Both writing and film can tell a story, but telling it in words and telling it in images and dialogue have different effects.
The issues of adaptation become even more complicated when the story contains abstract ideas, which cannot easily be rendered visually. The movie Things to come, as scripted by Herbert G. Wells himself, embodies the abstract ideas of The shape of things to come in characters that speak for one side of the argument or another. It also makes us visualize the decline of a society without technology by using costumes and settings. Political ideas appear written on placards that demonstrators carry in the public square. And the list of examples can go on.
"The sentinel," a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke, has some action and characters, but the ideas the narrator expresses are more important. They were so important for the time that Stanley Kubrick managed to create a full-length movie out of a few printed pages. What are the ideas expressed by Clarke in his story? Why were they important in his time? How does Kubrick interpret them?
In a four pages essay, show how the action and the visual/auditory symbols of 2001 A space Odyssey translate Clarke's ideas about the significance of outer space exploration in human civilization. Identify Clarke's ideas and explain how their visual counterparts make them more explicit or add something to them.
This paper must be four double-spaced pages in length (not including the references page) and utilize at least four academic quality secondary sources. Margins should be no more than one inch (right and left) and the essay should be composed in 12-point Times New Roman font. Sources must be documented and cited using APA format. Please see the tutorial in the syllabus for additional details on APA formatting and the tutorial in Week 1 on "The Elements of Fiction" for this paper.